Vipshop Holdings Limited (NYSE:VIPS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jialong Shi: Thank you very much, Eric, Mark, Jessie for taking my questions and good evening. [Foreign Language] I have two questions. The first one is a follow-up question on this return rate. So just wondering how bps return rate for the apparel category, compared to those of the peers or compared to the apparel industry — the average return rate for the apparel industry in China during the same period. And also for this increase in return rate since this year, other than this consumers cautiousness, just wondering whether or not the competition might have also played a role in this increase in return rate for the power category. My second question is about the Super VIP member. Just wonder what is the latest number of quarterly super VIP members. How much of your GMV in the second quarter was contributed by Super VIP? Thank you.

Eric Shen: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] In terms of return rates as to the Vipshop versus peers, we are a shelf-based e-commerce player, and our business model is quite unique. We are a discount retailer and we often offer flash sales and consumers have to make real-time decisions and their shopping curve, if they put any products in it, they only have 20-minutes to decide whether to buy or not. And our peers, they have some ways to motivate their customers not to return, for example, they would deliver coupons of vouchers through their customer service staff. So we are running on a very different business model. And typically, our return rate is 2 to 3 percentage points higher than our peers according to our estimate. Whether it’s industrialize phenomenon as to return rate trending up, we are still doing some research, because we don’t have the full set of data from the — all the industry players, we just have some of them.

So we don’t have a conclusion on that. We’re still evaluating the situation. As to consumer sentiment, we mentioned probably part of the reason is that consumers are becoming more cautious, but that’s also our estimate. We don’t have a solid concrete scientific way to determine whether it’s because consumers’ wallet is shrinking. So we don’t have a conclusion on that. But it’s our best estimate that probably they are becoming more rational. And as to the competition, we don’t think it is behind the return rate. Because typical consumers pay for all the items, they put in their shopping card and then they decide whether to keep on regional whether to keep them or to return one or two. So we’ve already made their decision to shop on our platform.

And they just need to consider whether to keep all the items or they just need to return some of that. So it’s not because of the competition. So in summary, we don’t have a final conclusion on why the return rate is trending up. And as to — at VIP, we — as of June 30, we have a total of 6.7 million Super active VIP members, who contributed to 44% of our online spending. In terms of GMV, that should be a little bit higher. Again, SVIP have a little — much higher return rate than Non-SVIP members, because they love VIP shop, — love one of the reasons they love to shop on our platform is because we offer worry-free return on exchanges. And they think this is a place that is very reassuring for their customer experience. So that’s one of the reasons why the return rate is trending [Technical Difficulty]

Operator: Thank you. Due to time constraints, that concludes today’s question-and-answer session. At this time, I will turn the conference back to Jessie for any closing remarks.

Jessie Zheng: Thank you for taking the time to join us today. If you’re having any questions or follow-up, please don’t hesitate to contact our IR team. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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